by Maxim Gorky
The spies moved closer together.
“In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, let us examine the snares of the devils in the light of truth. Let us look at them with our simple Russian mind, and we’ll see how they scatter like dust before our eyes. Just look! They want to deprive the Czar of his divine power, his liberty to rule the country according to the dictates from on High. They want to arrange popular elections, so that the people should send to the Czar their representatives, who would promulgate laws abridging his power. They hope that our people, ignorant and drunk, will permit themselves to be bought with wine and money, and will bring into the Czar’s palace those who are pointed out to them by the traitors, liberals and revolutionists. And whom will they point out? Jews, Poles, Armenians, Germans, and other strangers, enemies of Russia.”
Klimkov observed that Sasha standing in back of Yasnogursky, smiled sardonically like the devil. He inclined his head, to keep the sick spy from noticing him.
“This band of venal swindlers will surround the bright throne of our Czar and will close his wise eyes to the destiny of our country. They will deliver Russia over into the hands of strangers and foreigners. The Jews will establish their government in Russia, the Poles their government, the Armenians and the Georgians theirs, the Letts theirs, and other paupers whom Russia took under the shelter of her powerful hand, theirs. They will establish their governments, and when we Russians remain alone—then—then—it means—”
Sasha standing at Yasnogursky’s side, began to whisper into his ear. The old man waved him off in annoyance, and said aloud:
“Then the Germans, and the English will rush upon us, and will clutch us in their greedy paws. The destruction of Russia is threatening us, dear comrades, my friends. Have a care!”
The last words of his speech were uttered in a shout, then he lapsed into silence lasting about a minute, after which he raised his hand over his head and resumed:
“But our Czar has friends. They watch over his power and over his glory like faithful dogs unbought. They have organized a society for war upon the dastardly conspiracies of the revolutionists, upon the constitution, and every abomination destructive to us, the true Russian people. Counts and princes celebrated for their services to the Czar in Russia are entering this organization, governors submissive to the will of the Czar and faithful to the covenant of our sacred past. Perhaps even the very highest—”
Sasha again stopped Yasnogursky. The old man listened to him, grew red, waved his hands, and suddenly shouted:
“Well, speak yourself. What does it mean? What right have you—I don’t want to—”
He gave an odd little leap, and pushing the crowd of spies apart, walked away. Sasha now took his place, and stood there tall and stooping with head thrust forward. Looking around with his red eyes, and rubbing his hands, he asked sharply:
“Well, did you understand?”
“We did—we did,” several voices sounded sullenly and half-heartedly.
“Of course!” exclaimed Sasha in derision. Then he began to speak, pronouncing every word with the precision of a hammer-blow. His voice rang with malice.
“Let those also listen who are wiser. Let them explain my words to the fools. The revolutionists, the liberals, our Russian gentry in general, have conquered. Do you understand? The administration has resolved to yield to their demands, it wants to give them a constitution. What does a constitution mean to you? Starvation, death, because you are idlers and do-nothings, you are no good for any sort of work. It means prison for the most of you, because most of you have merited it; for a few others it means the hospital, the insane asylum, because there are a whole lot of half-witted men, psychically sick, among you. The new order of life, if established, will make quick work of you all. The police department will be destroyed, the Department of Safety will be shut down, you will be turned out into the street. Do you understand?”
All were silent, as if turned to stone.
“Then I would go away somewhere,” Klimkov thought.
“I think it’s plain,” said Sasha, after a period of silence. As he again embraced his audience in his look, the red band on his forehead seemed to have spread over his whole face, and his face to become covered with a leaden blue.
“You ought to realize that this change is not advantageous to you, that you don’t want it. Therefore you must fight against it now. Isn’t that so? For whom, in whose interest, are you going to fight? For your own selves, for your interests, for your right to live as you have lived up to this time. Is what I say clear? What can we do? Let everyone think about this question.”
A heavy noise suddenly arose in the close room, as if a huge sick breast were sighing and rattling. Some of the spies walked away silently and sullenly, with drooping heads. One man grumbled in vexation:
“They tell us this and they tell us that. Why don’t they increase our salaries instead?”
“They keep frightening us, always frightening us.”
In the corner near Sasha about a dozen men had gathered. Yevsey quietly moved up to the group, and heard the enraptured voice of Piotr:
“That’s the way to speak! Twice two are four, and all are aces.”
“No, I’m not satisfied,” said Solovyov sweetly with a prying note in his voice. “Think! What does it mean to think? Everyone may think in his own way. You should tell me what to do.”
“You have been told!” put in Krasavin roughly and sharply.
“I don’t understand,” Maklakov declared calmly.
“You?” shouted Sasha. “You lie! You do understand!”
“No.”
“And I say you do, but you’re a coward, you’re a nobleman—and—and—and I know you.”
“Maybe,” said Maklakov. “But do you know what you want?” He spoke in so cold a tone, and put so much significance into his voice, that Yevsey trembled and thought:
“Will Sasha strike him?”
Sasha, however, merely repeated the question in a screeching voice:
“I? Do I know what I want?”
“Yes.”
“I will tell you.” Sasha raised his voice threateningly. “I am soon going to die. I have nobody to fear. I am a stranger to life. I live with hatred of good people before whom you in your thoughts crouch on your knees. Don’t you know? You lie. You are a slave, a slave in your soul. A lackey, though you are a nobleman, and I am a muzhik, a perspicacious muzhik. Even though I attended the university, nothing has corrupted me.”
Yevsey felt that Sasha’s words crawled in his heart like spiders, enmeshing him in gluey threads, squeezing him, tying him up, and drawing him to Sasha. He pressed through to the front, and stood alongside the combatants trying to see the faces of both at the same time.
“I know my enemy. It’s you, the gentry. You are gentlemen, even as spies. You are abhorrent everywhere, everywhere execrable, men and women, writers and spies. But I know a means for having done with you gentlemen, the gentry. I know a way. I see what ought to be done with you, how to destroy you.”
“That’s the very point that’s interesting, not your hysterics,” said Maklakov thrusting his hands in his pockets.
“Yes, it’s interesting to you? Very well. I’ll tell you.”
Sasha evidently wanted to sit down, for he vacillated like a pendulum. He looked around as he spoke without pause, breathless from quick utterance.
“Who orders life? The gentry. Who spoiled the pretty animal man? Who made him a dirty beast, a sick beast? You, the gentry. Hence all this, the whole of life, ought to be turned against you. So we must open all the ulcers of life, and drown you in the stream of abomination that will flow from them, in the vomit of the people you have poisoned. A curse on you! The time of your execution and destruction has come. All those who have been mutilated by you are rising against you, and they’ll choke you, crush you, you understand? Yes, that
’s how it will be. Nay, it already is. In some cities they have already tried to find out how firmly the heads of the gentlemen are fixed on their shoulders. You know that, don’t you?”
Sasha staggered back, and leaned against the wall, stretching his arms forward, and choking and gasping over a broken laugh. Maklakov glanced at the men standing around him, and asked also with a laugh:
“Did you understand what he said?”
“One can say whatever he pleases,” replied Solovyov, but the next instant added hastily, “In one’s own company. The most interesting thing would be to find out for certain whether a secret society has actually been organized in St. Petersburg and for what purpose.”
“That’s what we want to know,” said Krasavin in a tone of demand. “And what sort of people are in it, too.”
“In reality, brothers, the revolution has been transferred to other quarters,” exclaimed Piotr, merrily and animatedly.
“If there really are princes in that society,” Solovyov meditated dreamily, “then our business ought to improve.”
“You have twenty thousand in the bank anyway, old devil.”
“And maybe thirty. Count again,” said Solovyov in an offended tone, and stepped aside.
Sasha coughed dully and hoarsely; while Maklakov regarded him with a scowl. Yevsey gradually freed himself from the thin shackles of the attraction that the sick spy had unexpectedly begun to exert upon him. His talk, which at first had seized Klimkov, now dissolved and disappeared from his soul like dust under rain.
“What are you looking at me for?” shouted Sasha at Maklakov.
Maklakov turned and walked away without answering. Yevsey involuntarily followed him.
“Did you understand anything?” Maklakov suddenly inquired of Yevsey.
“I don’t like it.”
“No? Why?”
“He’s always rancorous, and there’s rancor enough without him.”
“Yes, so there is,” said Maklakov, nodding his head. “There’s rancor enough.”
“And it’s impossible to understand anything,” Klimkov continued, looking around cautiously. “Everybody speaks differently—”
The words had scarcely left his mouth when he grew alarmed, and glanced sidewise at Maklakov’s face. The spy pensively brushed the dust from his hat with his handkerchief, apparently oblivious of the dangerous words.
“Well, good-by,” he said, holding out his hand to Yevsey. Yevsey wanted to accompany him, but the spy put on his hat, and twirling his mustache, walked out without so much as looking at him.
CHAPTER XXV
Something strange, like a dream, grew in the city, rushing onward with irresistible rapidity. People lost their fear completely. On the faces which only a short time ago had been flat and humble, an expression of conscious power and preoccupation now appeared sharply and clearly. All recalled builders preparing to pull down an old structure, and busily considering the best way of beginning the work.
Almost every day the workingmen in the factory suburb openly arranged meetings, at which known revolutionists appeared, who in the very presence of the police and officials of the Department of Safety sharply censured the order of life, and pointed out that the manifesto of the minister convoking the Duma was an attempt of the administration to pacify the people, who were stirred up by misfortune, in order to deceive them in the end, as always. The speakers urged their listeners not to believe anybody except their own reason.
Once when a rebel orator shouted, “The people alone are the true and legal masters of life; to them belong the whole earth and all freedom,” a triumphant roar came in reply, “True, brother!”
Yevsey deafened by the shouts turned away, and met Melnikov who had been standing in back of him. His eyes burned, he was black and dishevelled. He flapped his arms, as a crow flaps its wings, and bawled:
“Tr-r-r-ue!”
Klimkov pulled the skirt of his coat in amazement, and whispered in a low voice:
“What ails you? The speaker is a Socialist. He’s under surveillance.”
Melnikov blinked his eyes, and asked:
“He?” Without awaiting a reply, he shouted again, “Hurray! True!” Then to Yevsey very angrily, “Get out! It’s all the same who speaks the truth.”
Yevsey smiled timidly at the new speeches. He looked around helplessly for some person in the crowd with whom he might speak openly; but on finding a pleasant face that inspired confidence, he sighed and thought:
“I’ll begin to talk with him, and he’ll at once understand that I’m a spy.”
He frequently heard the revolutionists speak of the necessity of arranging another life upon earth. Dreams of his childhood returned, broadened and filled with a clear content. He believed in the hot fearless words. But the faith grew feebly and lazily upon the shaky, slimy soil of his soul, choked with impressions, poisoned by fear, and exhausted by violence. His faith was like a child suffering with rachitis, bow-legged, with large eyes always gazing into the distance.
Yevsey admired the beautiful growth of the rebellion. But he lacked the power to fall in love with it. He believed words. He did not believe people. The dreams stirring his heart died the instant they touched it. A timorous spectator he walked along the shore of a stream without the desire to plunge into its soul-refreshing waves. At the same time he longed wistfully for someone to triumph, for someone to make life calm and pleasing, and point out a comfortable place in it where he might find repose.
At first he could not comprehend why both the revolutionists and the officers of the spies censured the administration, why both asserted that someone wanted to deceive the people. When the people themselves, however, came out into the street, and began to speak, Yevsey stopped to think about this question.
The spies walked about slowly, indolently; they all grew strange to one another, maintaining sullen silence, and looking into the eyes of their comrades suspiciously, as if expecting something dangerous from one another. The officials ceased to talk, and sank into the background. They gave out no plans of action, and said nothing new.
“Has nothing been heard in regard to this St. Petersburg league of princes?” Krasavin asked almost every day.
Once Piotr joyously announced:
“Boys, Sasha has been summoned to St. Petersburg. He’ll fix up a game there, you’ll see.”
Viakhirev, the hook-nosed, reddish spy, remarked lazily:
“The League of Russian People has been permitted to organize fighting bands to kill the revolutionists. I’ll go there, I’m a good shot.”
“A pistol is a fine thing,” said someone. “You shoot, and then run away.”
“How simply they speak about everything,” thought Yevsey. He involuntarily recalled other conversations—Olga and Makarov—which he impatiently pushed away from himself.
Sasha returned from St. Petersburg, as it were stronger. Concentrated green sparks gleamed in his dim eyes. His voice had become deeper, his entire body seemed to have straightened and grown sounder.
“What are we going to do?” asked Piotr.
“You’ll soon find out,” answered Sasha, showing his teeth.
Autumn came as always quiet and melancholy. But the people did not remark its advent. Yesterday bold and noisy, today they came out into the streets still bolder, still more confident, and upheld Yevsey’s faith in their victory, in the nearness, of a calm, peaceful, comfortable life.
Then came the fabulously terrible and marvellous days, when all the people ceased to work, and the customary life that for so long had held oppressive sway, oppressive in its cruelty and aimless play, suddenly ceased, as if crushed by a giant embrace. The people refused the city, their ruler, bread, fire, and water. And for a number of nights it stood in darkness, hungry, thirsty, sullen, and affronted. During those dark, insulting nights, the working-people walked through the streets with son
g, childish joy shining in their eyes. For the first time they clearly saw their power, and themselves were amazed at its significance. They understood their might over life, and good-naturedly exulted, looking at the blinded houses, the motionless dead machines, the dumbfounded police, the closed, ever-hungry jaws of the shops and restaurants, the frightened faces, the humble figures of those persons who had never learned to work, but only to eat much, and who therefore considered themselves the best blood in the city. Their power over people had been torn from their impotent hands in these days, yet their cruelty and cunning remained. Klimkov looked at the men accustomed to command now silently submitting to the will of the hungry, poor, and unwashed. He understood that it had become a shame for the lords to live. So trying to cover up their shame, they smiled approvingly upon the working-people, and lied to them. They were afraid of the workers. In spite of the lords, however, it seemed to Yevsey that the past would not return. He felt that new masters had arisen, and if they had been able all of a sudden to stop the course of life, then they would now be able to arrange it differently, more freely, and more easily for themselves and for all.
The old, the cruel, and the malicious abandoned the city. It melted away in the darkness. The people perceptibly grew better, and though the city remained without illumination, yet the nights were stirring, merry as the days.
Everywhere crowds of people gathered and spoke animatedly, in free, bold, human speech, of the approaching days of the triumph of truth. They believed in it hotly. The unbelievers were silent, but looked into the new faces, impressing the new speech upon their minds.
Often Klimkov observed the spies in the crowds. Not wishing to be seen by them, he walked away. He met Melnikov more frequently than the others. This man roused his particular interest. A dense crowd always gathered around him, and his thick voice flowed from the centre of the group like a dark stream.